As one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “As one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois reflects on the complex and often painful history that shapes human relationships.
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But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.